Cassie felt all the air go out of her.
The name on the card was Laura Ensley. Division 11A.
“Did you know her?” Farrow asked from the front seat.
Lived. Did.
“Where did you get this?” she asked, gesturing toward Harrison with the card. Her hand was shaking, her mind jumbled with images.
Did. Lived.
Harrison glanced at his partner. “The morning we broke up the camp, there were some things left behind. Your backpack.”
Cassie nodded, her fingertips clenched white around the card.
“There was another bag, close to yours. The ID card was in there.”
“Did you know her?” Farrow repeated.
Cassie nodded again, her throat beginning to swell. “Yes.”
Harrison glanced at Farrow.
“She called herself Skylark.”
Harrison nodded slowly and cleared his throat. “Cassandra—” He reached into his jacket again.
This time, he handed her a photograph.
Cassie knew, even before she had mentally processed the image. She knew, and the world began to spin out of control. She couldn’t breathe and she felt like she was going to throw up or pass out.
“Oh my God.”
It was a photo of Skylark’s face. Her eyes were closed, her skin as white as fresh snow, and as cold. She was lying against a white surface. The photograph had been taken from directly above her, close, unflinching. Her hair was pulled all the way back, her forehead long, a blank, cold plain, unwrinkled, utterly devoid of expression.
Her lips were grey.
Lived. Did.
There was nothing left of her. The brightness, the spark of her was gone. Her lips were slightly parted, but there was no trace of a smile.
“Oh my God.”
“Cassandra.” Harrison started to reach out, but stopped himself. “I’m sorry,” he said.
She shook her head, hunching over as tears gushed forth uncontrollably. Her breath came in great heaves.
After a moment, she felt a hand touch her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” Harrison repeated.
“Is she—is she—” She couldn’t form the words, but she needed to know. She needed to hear the answer to the question she could not ask.
“Is that your friend?” Farrow asked, in a voice gentler than Cassie had ever heard coming from her.
Cassie shuddered. “Yes. Is she—” She looked up at Harrison.
After a moment, he nodded. “I’m sorry.”
Hearing it, hearing what she already knew, brought on another wave, another heaving sob.
She struggled to breathe.
“Cassandra …”
“I …” She fumbled at the door, but there was no handle, no way to get out. She tried to hold it in, but she couldn’t, and half-turning, she threw up on the floor behind the passenger seat.
Farrow said something in the distance, but Cassie’s ears were full of a roaring, sucking noise. Her throat and nose burned, and she wiped her chin.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I’m sorry.” Small shuddering sobs now. She just wanted to go away. She just wanted to disappear.
“It’s okay,” Harrison said, as Farrow opened the front door and climbed out of the car. “It’s not the worst thing to happen back here.” He tried a smile, but it didn’t work.
“Cassandra,” he started, as Farrow opened his door from outside. “Listen—”
“How?” she asked, barely able to speak, watching Farrow’s grey shape as she came around the back of the car. “How did she—” She already knew what he was going to say, but she needed to hear the words.
The door behind her opened with a sharp click and a rush of cold air. She tightened, ready to bolt, but she needed to hear.
“Let’s—” Harrison mimed a getting-out-of-the-car gesture, started to move, but Cassie didn’t budge.
“How did she die?” she asked, completely flat.
He looked at her for a moment. “She was murdered,” he said slowly. “A couple of kids found her.”
“Where?” she asked.
The question seemed to surprise him.
“Where did they find her?” she asked, the vision of the alley from her dreams filling her head: brick walls, broken concrete. A metallic bin. So vivid, more a memory than anything she had imagined.
Harrison glanced down at the floor behind the passenger seat, then back at Cassie.
“Come on,” he said, climbing out of the car.
Cassie pulled herself unsteadily out of the back seat, not trusting her legs to support her, not sure the ground would even be there under her feet.
It felt like a dream, like the world was a movie she was watching, like if she walked in the wrong place she would cast a shadow on the screen, destroy the illusion completely.
But the illusion was already gone.
Shattered.
“Where?” she asked again as Harrison came around the car. The cold air scorched the rawness of her throat, her nose.
“Fernwood,” he said. “It’s a neighbourhood not far from here.” He took a deep breath. “She was found behind a building.”
“An alley.”
He looked at her. “Yes.”
Cassie laughed; she couldn’t help herself. It was all so—She laughed, covered her mouth, but she couldn’t stop.
Harrison just looked at her.
“Cassandra—” He leaned toward her, but she stepped away.
“I’m all right,” she said, the cold cutting into her. “I’m all right.”
She could have repeated the words a million times, that wouldn’t have made them true. All she wanted to do was collapse on the ground, fall asleep and never wake up. Total oblivion: that was what she wanted.
“We just have a couple of questions.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “Sure,” she said. “Fine. Whatever.”
Harrison flipped open his notebook. “When was the last time you saw Laura Ensley?”
She wanted to hit him. “That night,” she said. “The night the police came to the camp.”
“That fits with the time of death,” Farrow said, coming around the car.
Harrison shot her a look as Cassandra’s legs wobbled under her.
“According to her file she had some problems with drugs. Was she involved with anything—”
“Farrow,” Harrison said. “We don’t—”
He folded his notebook closed as Cassie started crying again. “Okay,” he said.
He glanced at Farrow. She shook her head slightly, but he turned back to Cassie.
“Cassie,” he said, and the gentleness of his tone was one of the most terrifying things she had ever heard. “I have to ask you something …”
“Oh God,” she groaned. “Oh God.”
“It’s about your father.”
A sound came out of her throat, a knife-edged sob.
Harrison glanced at Farrow again.
“Have you seen him?”
The question drove the breath from her. “What?” She gasped.
“Have you seen your father? Here?”
She just looked at him. The question didn’t make any sense. “Your mother called us,” Farrow said, stepping forward. “She said that she hadn’t seen him. That he had left a few days ago.”
Cassie looked between them, trying to make their words make sense.
“She thought he might be coming here.”
She surrendered to the sobbing, crumpling to her knees on the cold pavement. “Oh God.”
A moment later, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t know whose it was, her eyes pressed shut. Maybe when she opened them, it would all have been a dream.
“Why don’t you come with us,” Harrison said gently. “We can—”
She pulled herself to her feet, pulled herself away from the touch, from the words. “No,” she sobbed. “I can’t. I can’t.”
“Cassie …”
“I can’t.”
“We
can get you help.”
She bristled at the words, but she tried not to let it show, tried to focus on her breathing.
“I’m serious,” he said, his voice tighter now. “It’s not safe out here.” He glanced into the park. “You need to be careful. Find someone you can trust. You can look out for each other.”
She shook her head, wiped her nose on the shoulder of her coat.
“I did,” she said.
All the air had been sucked out of the universe.
He looked at her for a long time, like there was something else that he wanted to say, then turned back to the car. “All right, Farrow,” he said.
Cassie watched as the two of them got back into the cruiser. Harrison unrolled the passenger window and looked at her as they pulled away from the curb.
She watched as the right-turn indicator flashed at the end of the block, as the car disappeared around the corner.
She clung to the fence as the sun rose around her, her legs barely able to support her weight, not thinking, not able to think. She cried, and as the tears steamed on her cheeks, she mouthed Skylark’s name over and over, no sound, just gentle puffs of grey drifting silently away.
When she couldn’t cry anymore, she wiped her face roughly with her sleeve, sniffed decisively, then walked through the gap in the fence and back into the camp.
She wanted to crawl into Ian and Jeff’s tent, zip the fly up like she had never been gone, and curl up in the sleeping bag, tug it over her head and let it fill with the warmth of her breath. She didn’t want to talk to them, not now—she didn’t trust herself to speak—she just wanted to lie there, knowing that she wasn’t completely alone.
She stopped short as she rounded the corner.
Bob was standing in the shadows at the head of the path.
“You’re up early,” he said.
She just nodded, afraid to try to speak.
“Have a good chat with your friends in the five-o?” He looked at her like he actually expected her to say something, but then he shook his head. “Come on,” he said. “Brother Paul wants to see you.”
“Now?” she managed to croak.
“When else?”
For a moment she thought about saying no, about returning to Ian and Jeff’s tent, hiding herself away. But it wouldn’t do her any good. And she didn’t want to think about what Bob and his friends might do if she refused.
She followed the dreadlocked boy down the path.
Brother Paul’s tent shimmered in the dim light, the flickering of several lanterns causing her to squint as Bob held the flap open for her and she stepped inside.
Brother Paul was pulling on his jacket, head slightly hunched under the ceiling of the tent. He stopped when she came in.
“Dorothy,” he said, stepping toward her. “Oh, I am so happy to see you back with us.”
As he opened his arms, Cassie realized there wasn’t enough room in the tent for her to step away. She had no choice but to allow him to wrap his arms around her, to pull her into the smoky, musky smell of him.
“We were all so worried about you girls,” he murmured in her ear as his hands rubbed up and down her back.
Cassie didn’t say anything, didn’t move, stayed frozen in place, trying not to breathe.
“You just disappeared,” he continued. “We thought—”
He was cut off by a scratching at the front flap of the tent behind Cassie, and Bob’s voice. “Brother Paul?”
He stepped back from Cassie. “Yes, send her in,” he said, loudly enough to be heard outside.
The flap of the tent parted, and a girl entered, carefully balancing a mug between her hands.
“Thank you for this, Charity,” Brother Paul said as he took the mug from her.
It took Cassie a moment to recognize the girl who had been next to her at the wall; it seemed like it had been a lifetime ago. Charity looked like she was a little younger than Cassie, her face smooth, her hair clean and pulled back into a blond ponytail. She looked at Brother Paul with an openness to her expression, eyes wide and focused on him.
The way Skylark had looked at him.
He took a sip from his mug. “That’s perfect,” he said, exhaling contentedly. “Thank you so much.”
He brushed the girl’s cheek with his hand, and she turned away, blushing, disappearing back out through the flap without speaking.
“She’s very special,” he said, watching her go. “Poor child.”
He took another sip from his mug. “Tea,” he said. “Should I have her bring you a cup?”
Cassie shook her head. “No. No, that’s fine.” The words were all she could muster.
He nodded. “All right,” he said. “Would you like to sit down?” He pointed at his bed, a mess of blankets and a sleeping bag on top of an air mattress.
“No,” Cassie said. “No thank you.”
“All right,” he repeated. “Well, then.” He took another sip from the mug, pursing his lips like the tea was too hot. “So I am told you had an encounter with the local police this morning.”
Cassie didn’t know if the chill running up her back was from his voice or from the draft blowing through the tent flap.
It felt like there was glass in her throat when she swallowed. “They … they wanted … Skylark …”
He looked at her for a long moment, and his face fell. Tea sloshed from the top of his mug, splashing with a crackle on the plastic floor.
“Oh my God,” he said. “She …?”
Cassie nodded.
“Oh my God.” He turned, first to the left, then to the right, like he was looking for somewhere to go, something to do. Stepping toward the far end of the bed, he set his mug down on the overturned milk crate, next to the black book he always carried, then turned back to Cassie. “Did they …” He stopped himself. “Oh, Dorothy. I’m so sorry.”
He stepped toward her, his arms open again.
This time, Cassie stepped back, buckling the plastic wall of the tent.
Brother Paul lowered his arms, nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course.” He shook his head. “She was so lovely,” he said. “Such a lovely person. Did the police … Did they tell you what happened?”
She shook her head, barely able to speak, not sure that she wanted to. To tell him—to say the words out loud, to describe what Harrison and Farrow had told her, to hear it, in her own voice—would make it all real. It would mean that Skylark was truly gone.
Laura.
“Are you all right, dear?” Brother Paul asked, leaning toward her, his voice lowering. “This must be so hard for you …”
Cassie bit her lip and nodded. She knew that if she made the slightest sound, she would start crying again, and this time, she probably wouldn’t stop. Ever.
“Are you sure you don’t want to sit down?” He gestured again at the bed.
She shook her head.
“All right,” he said, nodding slowly. “But know,” he said, staring at her, his eyes locking on her own, “that we are all here for you. This loss, it lessens all of us. She was such a … presence. We’re all here to support you, to give you what you need. We’re a family, you know that.” He gestured toward the front of the tent. “I’ll have Bob find you a good tent—”
“No,” she said, her voice louder than she intended. “Thank you. I can’t. I just …”
“You can’t be thinking of going back out there?” Brother Paul’s voice was incredulous. “By yourself?”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to,” she said.
“Then don’t.” He didn’t give her time to finish what she was going to say.
“I—” She started to argue with him. She wanted to explain, to make him understand why she couldn’t stay. But there was nothing she could say that would make any sense, even to herself. “I’ll be all right,” she said, instead, knowing that it was a lie.
“Dorothy—” But she was already turning away, out through the zipper, into the cold.
The wind blew cold and hard d
own Douglas Street, cutting through Cassie’s layers, driving tiny snowflakes like needles into the exposed skin of her face. She staggered headlong into the wind, lashed and beaten with every step.
That she had run away again—not able to face Brother Paul, not able to even speak to Ian and Jeff when she had gone for her bag—that she had no place to go, didn’t really register for her. The tears that blistered on her cheeks in the driving snow were for Skylark.
Laura. Laura Ensley.
She had been so beautiful, so full of life. It had made Cassie feel better just to be near her.
And now she was gone.
She had been in grade eleven, the same grade as Cassie. In another world, in other lives, they might have been friends. Out here, sleeping on the frozen concrete, begging for change, they had been something else, something more.
Skylark had given her a home, a community, a shoulder to lean on. Cassie hadn’t realized how much she had been missing all of those things. And now she was gone.
She would never hear the sound of her laugh again. Never hear the sound of her voice. Never share a meal, a bed, a smile.
She was gone.
And the last thing Cassie would remember of her was the way the knife had slid into her stomach, almost without a sound, the way her eyes had widened in sudden surprise and the sound, almost like a zipper, as she had drawn the knife upward, splitting Skylark’s belly open, like unzipping another layer of clothes, the real Skylark spilling onto the ground as she cried out.
This was his favourite part.
Watching the girl, bent-backed, as she slumped down the sidewalk, bouncing around people as they bumped into her without noticing, as they passed her without even realizing she was there.
The sidewalks were crowded with Christmas shoppers, but none of them really saw the girl. She had become invisible.
She was nothing. And she knew it.
That was the best part: she was fully, consciously aware that she had been stripped of everything. Her family, her home, her friends, the new home she had found, all gone. Nothing left.
She was a smear on the pavement, a cigarette butt in the gutter, a hamburger wrapper caught in the skeletal twigs of a wintering shrub, discarded and forgotten.
He felt a wild rush of thrumming pleasure.
Black Feathers Page 15
